


Lilies

by flowersaretarts



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Boy Love, Cuddling, Flowers, Fluff, Gay Couple, Gay Romance, Isolation, Journey's End, Love, M/M, Reunion, Romance, Separation, Spooning, Theatre, lilies, m/m - Freeform, otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 06:02:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6599656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersaretarts/pseuds/flowersaretarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened to the boys after their farewell at the Regent's Park?<br/>Did their ways part forever?<br/>Was there a chance for them to reunite?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lilies

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my most beloved A. 
> 
>  
> 
> Million thanks to Meisiluosi and emmetcadrian for proofreading and correcting the text.

For A.

 

 _I lost myself to him_  
_and laid my face upon my lover's breast,_  
_And care and grief grew dim_  
_as in the morning's mist became the light._  
_There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair._

_“The Dark Night Of The Soul”_

Unsaid words, unmade beds, unfinished books.   
Frankly, I haven't read anything except my lines, again and again, rehearsing, performing and starting over.  
My typewriter didn't see the light since I stepped off the train at Manchester Piccadilly. Having moved into my new home, I shoved it under the desk in and couldn’t make myself reach for it since then. I still carried my notebook and a pencil in my pocket, but they remained unused.

It was all intake and no exhaust. The only genuine words that came out of me were my frequent telegrams to London. By god, I was frightened. I was sure he would be pushing the limits of his sanity. Not in his usual playful daredevil way. It would be a mechanical doll hysteria. A dummy jerking its limbs and spitting out manic laughter.

There was too much sadness that I hoped I was wrong about. What about it, they’d ask. Friends come and go. Friends talk, friends drink, friends say goodbye. Why making so much fuss about it, it’s everyone’s life. “It’s about growing up”. By which they mean hooking up with a nice girl in a lovely house, drive your kids to school and save for holidays, die a respected miserable fool. That’s what they say, reasoning, comforting themselves with the power of sense . I used to say the word “sense” a lot. It makes me barf now.

“Friends”.

Had anyone ever meant anything to you, at all? Can you let every person go in the same way? Can you let them go, after they threw their own lives away to set you free?

I had no choice but leave. There are so many “friends” who would unanimously agree that Vyv could play it dirty. Tantrums, dramas, manipulations and whatnot. There were thousands of tricks in his magic trunk, but he left it unlocked. Rejecting his sacrifice would be a betrayal and offend him more than my absence.

David's reply had lifted my spirit.

"Withnail fine. At my place. No phone."

That did it for me. I got drunk that night. He was alive and well. Perhaps not perfectly well, not well at all, I feared. But alive and safe, with a roof above his head and (undoubtedly) enough borrowed lucre and booze. He'd probably taken his lighter to the pawn shop by now.   
Not a slightest chance of a message from him. But he's there, and I am relieved. Hopefully, the signs of my relief won't be showing on my face tomorrow.  
_  
_

***

Withnail stood by the window, clicking his lighter, much to the annoyance of his flatmate, the owner of this Skins* Hotel, as they dubbed it.   
  
"Would you please, stop that, for fuck's sake!"  
  
Vyvian snorted, but did stop. Having put the lighter back into his coat's pocket, he plunged into an armchair and reached for the wine glass. This habit was relatively new. He had always been a person prone to sharp sudden movements, but none of them turned into a kind of tic.   
He used to be annoyed at Marwood scratching his head mindlessly while sticking his elbow up; an awkward gesture which, in Withnail's opinion, didn't suit him at all. No dull gestures, that was the unwritten law.

Withnail put his glass down. A kind of hollow sickening feeling in his chest.   
Click, click, clicking again. Closing and opening the lid of the lighter, inside his pocket.  
He waited for Dave to leave, then enjoyed the sound of it in complete silence.  
Apart from the audial ones, there were too many other empty spaces to fill.

There had never been a time in his life when he was completely on his own. Not one, or so he told himself. He threw in all these new people, new junk and ridiculous paperbacks. The radio was on. He couldn’t listen to the records. The silence after the needle popped off the vinyl disc was more frightening than the night he spent caressing the shotgun. Where was it now, he wondered. The bald geezer was probably keeping the weapon there. Hung it on the wall between a trashy Victorian painting and the cupboard.

Cricket match results and more wine, then a walk. Dave’s apartment was nowhere near the park, so Withnail’s daily route wasn’t stretched further than the end of this street. A block away from the pub, which was now as attractive as an open stomach of a dead pig.

The only thing that had his interest was the calendar on the bathroom wall. He studied the black numbers, printed underneath a pair of ridiculous breasts which looked like the eyeballs of some alien abomination.He turned thirty the other day. The “happy birthday” telegram from Manchester was ritually turned into a joint skin and gone with the ashes.

 

***  
I always looked good in frocks and uniforms. Raleigh’s costume fitted well, or was it me who fitted it. I was suitable for them, needed. Rather flattering, wouldn't you say.  
The reviews were full of praises.  
Good, I thought, as long as I keep holding onto this straw. As long as I am employable. What a word. What a sensation.  
I have become a reluctant acquaintance of a few, the sensible part of me advised that socialising could do me right. It probably did, and I was blessing the fate for the lack of female attention.   
All I needed was at least a spoonful of energy to unlock my typewriter case and start a page. Alas, ex nihilo nihil fit.

***

I re-read the play during my train ride. I would not even think of coming, if they gave him Hibbert. I laughed at first, because portraying the coward is what Peter could manage rather well. But would I really want to see him that way? Don’t be ridiculous.

So, the University Theatre, half past seven. There will be time for me to drop into a place I have in mind. Won’t take long.

***

The deeper into the autumn, the less I thought about London and whatever could be happening there. I never knew which day I was living through, except those when the landlord showed up. But it seemed the past hadn’t become a homogenous mass; it was alive and moving, and willing to get hold of me.

It was late November, when on a Friday night I caught a sight of a man, who stood up and went to the exit in the middle of the Act III.  
I usually ignore such moments, but then I saw a thin silhouette in the doorway. He couldn't be the only man in England to sport a floating overcoat. Withnail travelling to another city on his own, wasting his valuable time on the "mediocre army nonsense". I threw that thought away and went on with the scene.

After the curtain call and the last applause, I tumbled downstairs into the dressing room with the rest of sweating thespians.

I was exhausted. I declined the invitation to hit the pub, for the only wish I had then was to return home and fall into a long dreamless sleep.   
I heard them chuckle.  
"Looks like you've got a secret admirer!"   
"Blimey, couldn't they go with roses or what? The charming scent of rotten flesh, what a gift."  
Their attention appeared to be driven by an unexpected item on my makeup table.   
It was a branch of lilies, indeed, an odd choice. There wasn't a note or a card, the sender clearly wished to stay anonymous.  
I let them all leave before me, changing my clothes as slowly as I could.  
Having said my goodnights, I was sitting down to smoke, staring at the white flowers in front of me. Contrary to my fellow actor's opinion, I found their smell fresh and sobering, like a wakeup call, amidst the monotonous scents of my new life. I stroked a petal with my finger, filling my lungs with the smoke yet again.   
  


"Would you mind sharing the smoke?"  
The door creaked and the man slipped into the dressing room and stood before me with a cigarette. He was looking into my eyes, his arm outstretched toward me. I passed him a matchbox without getting up. Without a greeting either, as if he had been here with me all the time and being ceremonial felt ridiculous. He made it worse with his smile. You know, the one when the lips are stretched but the fear and hope, pleading, tenderness are there and make you lose your mind. What could I do? He looked fantastic, he bloody did. His best suit, old brogues almost shining. He looked like the old Vyv, the man he was almost six years ago, when we first met. I felt numb and dull. I don’t remember anything that I said to him. Most certainly, I wasn’t asking what he was doing here and why. A twenty-minute walk, then upstairs, without any meaningful word.

***

He wouldn't tell Peter about the true motivation to leave early.  
He didn't have to see the finale; his imagination pictured the scene in too many unnecessary details.  
The third scene would have Marwood flat on his back, panting, screaming in agony and asking for light before his last breath. For some that would not be too much to handle, probably.    
The tiny room was barely enough to fit a bed, an old desk and a chest of drawers. No empty bottles, pills or joint skins. It wasn’t tidy enough to be spared of Vyvian’s wincing, but quite habitable, despite the old useless furniture the landlord preferred to keep there.

A narrow bed, opposite the window, a few apples on the desk, looking strange in the tangerine streetlight. They both were starving, Peter knew it. He picked a fruit and cut it in half, offering one to Withnail, which the latter surprisingly accepted.

He took a bite and asked:

“So, what are you planning to do? Are you coming back before Christmas?”

“I don’t know, Withnail. I can’t…”

“Well, then what about the next season? Aren’t we going…?”

“We…”, Marwood sighed.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know.”

Marwood shrugged, staring into space. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and looked small and miserable, and so very vulnerable.   
Nothing went as he had expected. Withnail wished it wasn’t that way. He thought he’d be met with that sarcastic sideways smile, with Marwood being all calm and solid as his first name suggested. Lost and confused, he didn’t have answers. He wasn’t himself, not anymore. But neither was Withnail. He didn’t come here to leave. The awkward silence wasn’t there for too long, neither of them could cope with it.

“Thank you for coming, Withnail.”

“Are you showing me the door?” Vyvian snapped, visibly offended.

“No.” That was all Peter said, looking up at him. He still had the flowers in his hand.

“Can you help me put them in the water? I am terribly tired. Oh, no, wait. Wait. Just leave them on the desk. They will die, anyway. They’ll die tomorrow.”

As Withnail did what he was asked to, his friend almost fell onto the bed, curled up with his eyes open.

“This means, there will be a tomorrow. It’s only logical.”

Vyvian sat next to him and placed his hand on Marwood’s, and the poor lad clutched it instantly. It meant what Vyvian hoped it would. Strangers no more.

"I shall never forget this day.”

“Stop saying that. You sound like you’re bidding farewell.”

No invitation was needed for Withnail to climb over Peter and lie down next to the wall.

“I will think of something, Withnail. I promise you.”

He squeezed Marwood in his arms, pressed his face to the back of his head. With the warmth a new feeling came to him. That feeling Marwood often spoke of, much to his irritation, the “it has to get better” one. It was there to stay. Withnail was more than sure of that, as he inhaled the smell of the lilies and Peter’s hair, which had started growing back again.

**Author's Note:**

> Skin – a Liverpoodlian slang for “friend”.
> 
> Second Lieutenant Raleigh is one of the main characters of Journey's End, a play by R. C. Sherriff, who Marwood is cast to play, naïve and innocent, yet tough young man who thinks the war is silly.
> 
> Second Lieutenant Hibbert is a secondary character of the same play, a coward with “repulsive little mind”, who fakes neuralgia to be sent away from the front.
> 
> 69 Theatre Company, which staged “Journey’s End”, was located in the University Theatre, Manchester until 1972.


End file.
